


Five times Sean and Christian could have realized they're in love with each other

by wearemany



Category: Nip/Tuck
Genre: Five Times, M/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-09-10
Updated: 2006-09-10
Packaged: 2017-12-21 17:32:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,745
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/902962
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wearemany/pseuds/wearemany
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Credits: Punk, Sab, J, Jae_W. The Fabulous Baker Boys. And JMcM, DW and RM, who make these men love the way they do.</p></blockquote>





	Five times Sean and Christian could have realized they're in love with each other

1\. 1986.

"I can't take the MCATs for you," Sean says. "I have to take them myself at the same time." He runs his hands through his hair.

Christian giggles, still drunk. It's four a.m. The test starts in three and a half hours. Sean would wring his neck but then he'll never pass, they'll never get into the same school, they'll never do their residencies and start a practice together.

He sighs and stands up. "Somewhere in this desk there's some instant coffee," he says.

Christian, who's lying on his back on Sean's bed, kicks his feet onto the night stand. "I just took a Vivarin. I can already feel my cock trying to memorize organic chemistry by osmosis. I'll be fine." He sits up. "We'll be fine."

 

2\. 1989.

The photographer points at Christian. "Okay, best man. Pull out your keys." She holds the camera against her double Ds and blows a lock of hair off her cheek. It's steamy in Miami this late in the spring but they're the ones in full monkey suits. It's making him cranky. This whole day is making him irritable.

"What do you want me to pull out, sweetheart?"

She stares back at him, putting a hand on her hip. "Hold up your car keys, wise ass."

Christian jangles his pants. He's ready for a drink. "And why would I do that?"

"In case the groom needs a quick getaway," she says, and Sean barks out a laugh.

"This guy," Christian says. "I know you're the hired help and all, honey, but this guy just isn't the running type."

"No," Sean says, slinging an arm around Christian. Sean's tuxedo collar is shiny with sweat. "That's his department."

She snaps their picture, leaving one eye winked closed even after she pulls the camera away. Christian wags his tongue at her and palms his dick through his pocket.

She turns to her assistant. "All right, where's the mother of the bride?"

 

3\. 1994.

"I'll be late on Tuesday," Sean says.

It's the Friday afternoon before Labor Day and he's just told their one and a half full-time employees to go home early. It feels fantastic. It feels like the future, finally, after all these years stitching someone else's sutures, this decade of dreaming he and Christian have built into a business of their very own.

Christian is fixing his collar in the mirror on the back of their office door. "What do you think of this color?"

The shirt is a pale pink, so faint it looks like the sheets after Sean helped out around the house while Julia had the flu. "I think it's fine," he says, and it comes out sounding harsh, almost jealous. "What are you doing tonight?" he asks, though he knows the answer. It's his penance.

"It's a holiday weekend, Sean, the end of summer in South Beach, God's own private playground for the rich and horny. What I'm going to do is fuck my way up and down Lincoln Road like my dick is being chased on national television."

Christian smoothes down his jacket, some shimmery dark blue fabric that probably cost five hundred dollars.

"But don't worry, buddy, I promise to give you all the dirty little details whenever you manage to drag in your domesticated ass. Every pussy I lick, every tit I fuck. It'll be like you were right there the whole time."

Christian pulls open the door with typical flourish, nodding toward the hall.

"After you, dear partner," he says.

"I have to take Matt to his first day of school," Sean explains. "I'll be in by 10. I asked Linda to move all the surgeries back." He turns off the lights at reception, straightens a magazine on the table. When he looks up Christian is smiling wide. "I'm sure you'll appreciate a few extra hours' recovery time."

"Are you kidding?" Christian laughs with deep delight, with obvious pride. "No way we're letting the kid walk into that jungle without proper back up." He slaps Sean on the back. "We'll take Matty together."

 

4\. 2004.

On the way back from New York, there's a woman sitting in the middle seat.

Sean, without so much as a glance at Christian, offers her the aisle. Sean still takes the window, but he slides up the arm rest as he settles in. His thigh is hot against Christian's.

They drink slower on the way home, one, two little bottles on each tray. Christian knows it's a phantom memory, that he's been scrubbed clean and sanitized and spit out the other side of a great divide, but he'd swear his fingertips still smell like weed and pussy.

Sean turns one shoulder to rest against the window, four inches shorter than Christian but broader, more solid across. He's got a five o'clock shadow and Christian won't be able to see that any more and not think of the scrapes Sean left up the whore's long legs, Christian's tongue following in his wake, soothing the skin. Cleaning up Sean's mess for a change instead of the other way around.

Sean puts his arm around Christian, smiles sideways and leans back, tugging Christian with him. As Christian closes his eyes, Sean sighs in his ear. "I missed you," he says, and holds Christian's chest tight.

 

5\. 2006.

Sean knocks at quarter to midnight. He listened to the voice at the other end of the phone for a while, lifted weights for an hour, took a shower, got dressed again and got in the car.

Christian opens the door. "We have to stop meeting like this," he says.

"I wasn't sure --" Sean stops. Christian's shirtless, wearing silk pajama pants with a drawstring at the waist. "If I'm interrupting --"

"I'm alone, Sean." He steps back. "You been dipping into the protein powder again?"

Sean shakes his head and follows Christian into the apartment.

"Want a real drink, then?" He nods.

They sit side by side on the ridiculous crocodile, sipping Scotch. The new furniture and paint and that godawful cock statue give Sean a headache but the whiskey helps, puts a dull edge on everything.

"This is the bottle Julia bought us the day we opened shop," Christian says finally. "Remember?"

Sean looks down at his glass, amber swirling around polished crystal. "I can't believe it's still good," he says, feeling his thick tongue press against his teeth as he talks.

"Some things get better with age."

"Things, maybe," Sean says. "People, on the other hand..."

Christian crosses his legs, leaning back on the couch, then sits up straight and re-crosses them, one bare ankle resting on his knee. Sean slumps down farther.

"I don't know about you, Christian, but the older we get... The more we're supposed to know, the more wisdom we're supposed to have --" He lets his head roll back on the sofa and stares up at Christian's cheek. He'd never tell Christian this, but he's finally starting to look his age. Well, someone's age. Tiny tracks fan out from the corners of his eyes and mouth.

"The more it all seems like one big fucking cosmic joke?" Christian asks.

Sean blinks. "Yeah. Our practice, my marriage. Us. It's like no matter how much things seem figured out, there's still all this bullshit clouding the picture."

Christian sighs and says, "We're fine, Sean. If that's why you came over --"

"What's going on with you?" He pushes up with one hand until their shoulders are level. "You've been on edge all week, and I thought maybe it was me, maybe I was putting too much pressure on us to come up with a plan."

"The papers are already signed. If you're having second thoughts --"

Sean waves him off. "I'm fine. I'll be fine. Tell me what's been bothering you."

Christian swallows the rest of his glass, bending forward to set it on the table. He exhales deeply and Sean rests his hand on Christian's back, rubbing lightly between the shoulderblades. He can feel Christian tense. "I went to see someone," Christian says. "To talk about things."

"A therapist," Sean says. "Good. This has been a hard year, Christian --"

Christian stands up suddenly. He stalks to the counter and pours another drink.

Sean twists around, staring at Christian over the back of the couch.

"She said -- she thinks I'm _gay_ , Sean." There's a mean twist to his mouth and he chases the sentence with twenty-year Scotch knocked back like a shot.

"Obviously she doesn't know you like I do," Sean says.

Christian spreads his palms flat on the counter. "Oh, I don't know about that." He sounds sad, defeated. Heartbroken, Sean thinks, and doesn't know why.

"Come on. How many women have you screwed? Hundreds? Thousands?"

"She said that the root of my issues with --" Christian looks away. "My intimacy issues." He sighs. "I don't think my C.V. of cunty conquests impressed her terribly, Sean."

"Well," Sean says.

He wants to put his arms around Christian, hug him and hold him tight and tell him everything will be okay. It doesn't seem, though, that this is one of those times. This seems like one of those times when Christian stares into the sharp sun and pulls back the bandage to show just how deep the cut really is.

"Well," he says again. "Fuck her." Christian smirks. "What do _you_ think?"

"I don't know." Christian points at the cock statue in the corner. "Obviously I've been --"

"Overcompensating?"

They both smile. Sean holds up his glass.

"Another?"

Christian brings the bottle and sits down on the other side of the table. Sean doesn't like how far away he is, how disappointed Christian seems in himself. He's not sure this is an idea Christian wants to be talked out of.

"To tell you the truth," Sean says. "I always assumed you were fairly open-minded about your sexual preferences."

"I prefer blondes." Christian's smile is brittle, Botox.

"Don't I know it." Sean swallows more Scotch. "But there was that one time, in college..."

After a while, Christian says, "What the hell are you talking about?"

"That time with the -- the party."

"That narrows it down nicely, thank you."

Sean scratches his neck. "Undergrad, junior, maybe senior year. There was some costume party, I don't know, Halloween or something. I was too busy studying."

Christian laughs predictably. Sean can see him trying to remember, trying to pick through the pieces of their shared memories.

"You went as Sean Penn. That guy who lived down the hall -- the one with the Boy George poster on his door. He went as Madonna."

"What guy down the hall?"

"I think his name was Dan," Sean says. "Dan... Ryan?"

Christian frowns. "Ryan Daniels? Short? Bleached his hair?"

"Yes!" Sean finishes his drink, triumphant. "Ryan Daniels. Anyway you two went to the party. I, of course, went to the library and still beat you home. And when I woke up in the middle of the night, you and Ryan were in bed together."

"We were not!"

"You were!"

"Sean, I'm pretty sure I would remember if I screwed Ryan Daniels."

Sean holds up his hands. "Maybe you were drunk."

"There's drunk and then there's gay, Sean, and I'm pretty sure I'd remember crossing from one side of the Kinsey scale to the other." He sits back, rubs at his stomach. "Wait, you said Ryan was dressed like Madonna?"

"Yeah, and you were Sean Penn."

Christian holds up a finger. "I remember that party. And I did not screw Ryan Daniels."

"I saw you in bed with Madonna."

"Do you know how many girls went to costume parties in the '80s dressed like Madonna?"

Sean frowns.

"I remember now," Christian says. "Her name was -- oh, Christ, who cares. But she was wearing those little lace gloves with the fingers cut out. Jesus, that felt good. Have you ever had someone jerk you off while they're wearing gloves, Sean? It's --"

Christian rubs his hands over his cheeks, covers his eyes.

"This whole time, you thought I was gay."

"No, not like that," Sean says. He can't help it, his curiosity gets the best of his compassion. "You never... experimented?"

Christian shakes his head no, and Sean gets up and goes to sit next to him. He has to be closer for this.

"I just -- of anyone, Christian, I just assumed you'd be interested in screwing as many people as possible. You've never expressed any real prejudice -- hell, you've probably even helped me appreciate how complex and varied a person's sexuality can be."

"Because you thought I was gay."

"I never thought you were gay, Christian."

"Fine, you thought I was bisexual."

Sean's not drunk, but he's close, and he can feel the precipice of the conversation rising up in front of him. He needs to say this right. He needs Christian to understand. "I look at you sometimes, when we're scrubbing in and you're telling me about whatever woman you nailed the night before. And I keep thinking -- maybe one day."

Christian looks up. "One day what?"

"Maybe one day I'll loosen up a little, be less of a goddamned prude."

"You're not a prude."

"I am! It's okay. I've made my peace with it. I learned to apply myself, when necessary, imagine what would Christian do in a given situation. But I guess I never gave up hoping."

Christian turns toward him, so close Sean can see the fine tremor in his lip that means he's really upset, not just making a scene for the sake of it.

"I keep hoping, maybe one day it'll just come naturally. Like it does for you."

"Like it does for me," Christian echoes. His blazing white teeth grind together, his immaculate eyebrows furrow.

"You make it look so easy," Sean says. "You see what you want, you go after it, you get it."

Christian says, quietly, "And if I'm not so sure any more what I want?"

Sean puts his arm around Christian, cups his shoulder in his hand. "You'll figure it out." He kisses Christian's temple. "We'll figure it out together. We always do."

 

 

 

 

 

**And the one time they do.**

He kisses Sean, half on the mouth, half on his scratchy chin. Sean's tongue moves slowly against Christian's. His face is hot in Christian's hands. Sean kisses back, but not with any passion.

When Christian pulls away, Sean swallows, a loud click in a silent room.

"Sean --"

"Maybe," he says, with a sad smile. "You should try experimenting with someone who knows what he's doing."

Christian slides back on the couch, a hard push against Sean's shoulder. Sean is a mountain. Sean is Mt. Everest. "I can't," Christian says. This isn't about just anyone. This isn't about the therapist saying he's gay.

Sean stares at him, eyes wide, lips parted, chest rising and falling.

"I need you," he says, and catches his mistake. "I need you to help me figure it out."

Sean reaches out and touches Christian's knee. It's not enough. It's not anywhere near enough.

"Please, Sean," he says. His voice cracks and he hates himself. At least that part's not new. He clears his throat. "You said it yourself. Loosen up. What would Christian do." He tries a grin. "Don't be such a pussy, I won't bite."

"Not even if I ask nicely?" Sean asks, but he's laughing now.

"Do I look that easy?" Christian can hear himself, hear the same flirting, calculating tone he's used on a thousand women. It almost always works. The trick is to make them think it's their idea all along.

"Christian," Sean says. "I think we both know you're that easy."

Christian kisses him again. It's better this time, harder. Sean's shirt presses against Christian's bare collarbone and his dick twitches.

Somehow, Sean can tell. He looks down at Christian's pajama pants, reaching out a tentative hand to finger the drawstring. He smiles like a smart kid getting his first A.

"How different can it be?" Sean asks.

Christian can tell Sean's found it now, the confidence he thinks he follows by example, the quiet assurance of his place in Christian's life that Christian envies more than anything or anyone else Sean has.

"We're doctors. We're masters of anatomy."

"Exactly," Christian says, and stands up.

Sean gets to his feet, too, pulling his shirt over his head. "Let's go in there," he says, nodding past Christian. "This seems like the sort of thing we should do in the bedroom."

**Author's Note:**

> Credits: Punk, Sab, J, Jae_W. The Fabulous Baker Boys. And JMcM, DW and RM, who make these men love the way they do.


End file.
